US State Department halts Hillary Clinton email probe

Washington, April 2: The US State Department has halted its internal review of Democrat Party front-runner Hillary Clinton's most sensitive emails until the FBI's private probe is completed.

"We do not want our internal review to complicate or impede (the Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI probe)," spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said on Friday.

"We are prioritising the law enforcement investigation," she added.

In January, the department revealed that during its review of Clinton's 52,000 pages of private email, it had come across 22 documents that had to be upgraded to "Top Secret" and totally withheld from public release, ABC News reported.

It said at the time that it would conduct a separate internal review to determine if the secret information in those emails had been mishandled at the time they were sent.

The State Department said it is deferring that judgment to the FBI, which is conducting a more comprehensive security review of Clinton's email.

The outcome is expected amid the 2016 election cycle.

Clinton has said she is confident that will not happen and that she did not break any laws with her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state from January 2009 till February 2013.

In March, the FBI responded to a formal inquiry from the State Department about how it should proceed with its internal review. It recommended that the State Department follow standard practice and put its investigation on hold.